The real Luther — in bits and pieces

I came to this book on a circuitous route. I had first read Eric Metaxas’ wholly wrong, politically driven bio of Luther, which tried to make him into a modern conservative evangelical. I rejected it as a former Lutheran AND a current secularist who knew it was wrong theologically and a leftist who knew it was wrong politically. Many conservative and liberal Lutherans did likewise.

Shortly after, I read a dual bio of Luther and Erasmus, reviewed here, which had some interesting tidbits but nothing huge.

Then, someone on Goodreads, asking in comment to my Metaxas review what I would recommend, and after I mentioned that book as an alternative, asked if I had read Lyndal Roper. I said I had not and I got it via interlibrary loan.

It was interesting and very good, but … not quite over thetop. Although not Erik Erickson’s “Young Man Luther,” and not Freudian (I think) in the basis for the psychoanalyzing, Roper does a lot of that. As a professor, she has some chops — but it’s a professor of history.

(Also, looking now at her bibliography, from what I know, I’d disagree that witch burning was concentrated in German-speaking Imperial lands.)

So, I continued to look. And via a string of Net searches, came across the reviews to Oberman.

What follows is the review itself.

Luther: Man Between God and the Devil by Heiko A. Oberman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


How I missed this when it came out, I don’t know. It’s a shame to it that my conservative Lutheran college didn’t discuss this in any religion classes I took there. Given that it was still just six years old when I entered my conservative Lutheran seminary, it’s even more a discredit to Concordia Seminary to not have this book discussed in any classes there.

I know that Oberman was likely Dutch Reformed, not Lutheran, but, he clearly takes Luther at face value, including his man being like a mule ridden by either god or devil, and takes seriously what Luther intended by that.

And, he’s got the theological chops to know Luther’s history.

Even without him making connections, I now see that his reading Hutton’s edition of Valla exposing the Donation of Constantine as a forgery may well have upped not “just” Luther’s general antipathy to the papacy, but his seeing it as Antichrist. In turn, that meant to him that the end times were here.

I need to digress there for a moment. The “anticrhist,” or actually “antichrists” of I John are not the same as I Thessalonians’ “man of lawlessness,” but the term has become ascribed to that being. Rather, writing at least 40 years after Paul, and maybe 60, the author of I John seems to be referring to a king-sized “alligator” in a church or something like that, not a quasi-metaphysical entity. Digression done.

At the same time, Oberman’s book falls short in some ways.

Here’s one. If Luther wasn’t nearly as literalistic about “sola Scriptura” as the Scofield reference bible, then on what grounds was he right and the Schwärmerei wrong? On what basis were the Reformed (and Karlstadt) wrong and him right on the Eucharist, since Karlstadt had proven him wrong on the “this is” per Greek grammar?

None other than Luther being a cantankerous stubborn mule.

For that matter, since Master Melanchthon was the professor of Greek at Wittenberg, why didn’t HE challenge Luther like Karlstadt did? (Roper could have done some psychoanalysis with THAT in her book.)

Also, Oberman reports Luther myth as fact even as religious historians and theological scholars were challenging it by the time he wrote this book. I talk specifically of the nailing of the 95 Theses and the “here I stand” at Worms as fact, when almost certainly neither are.

Does it matter? In the second case, it’s more something of pietistic hagiography. But, Oberman cuts through that on other things.

On the Theses? Yes it matters. Goes to motive, or similar. If they were never nailed to a door, how did they become public so quickly, and what hand did Luther have in that, especially since his concerns about indulgences had been building a few years?

Otherwise, the book is spot on about aspects of Luther’s life Oberman covers. He is indeed an existentialist, but not Kierkegaard, let alone Sartre. He does have one foot in the medieval world and literalistic beliefs not even Kierkegaard did.

BUT … per the above, Oberman covers very little about Luther’s interactions with others. Much less than Roper on Karlstadt or the Reformed. Nothing on the Peasants Revolts or Muntzer et al.

So, five stars for what he covers. Three stars for what he doesn’t and for repeating Luther legend. We’re at a disappointing four stars, and yes, disappointing.

To get that fifth star?
1. A more complete explanation of Luther vis-a-vis the peasants, and within a larger framework of Luther's understanding of the post-1521 non-Catholic state.
2. Half a dozen pages, minimum, on the Marburg Colloquy, set within another half dozen pages on Luther vs the Reformed.
3. More on Luther's table talk.
4. Ideally, a bit on Luther's apparent glory-hogging at times, per Roper.

And with that, I have scratched my Luther bios itch more than enough.


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